Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is helping to perpetuate the myth that the House health care reform bill has a provision in it that would counsel the elderly to end their lives early so as to save money.
Reports the Iowa Independent:Grassley: Government shouldn’t ‘decide when to pull the plug on grandma’
“In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life,” Grassley said. “You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. Should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma”
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“There are some people who think it is a terrible problem that grandma is laying in a bed with tubes in her… and that the government should intervene,” he said. “I think that’s a family or religious thing that needs to be dealt with.”
I find this to be highly irresponsible, because while I suppose that there are “some people” who believe the things that Grassley mentions, but then again there are “some people” who believe that the Earth in flat and that the CIA is listening to their lives via the fillings in their teeth amongst any number of other things. The operative issue here is that there is no provision in any version of the health care reform that includes “a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.” That is sheer nonsense and telling people that they “have every right to fear” just fuels the flame of discontent to unproductive ends. Again, any discussion of “end of life counseling” refers to the option for patients to obtain counseling from their doctor (not a government bureaucrat, not a “death panel”) regarding things like living wills DNRs (Do Not Resuscitate orders) or giving a loved one durable power of attorney. All of these things ensure that families will have the legal powers to make life-and-death decisions, rather than leaving patients in limbo of requiring interventions of courts, etc.
Video, with the full quotations, is as follows:
I would contrast this approach to Obama’s proposals to this by David Frum:
The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.
Gee, there’s an idea: the application of reason and the attempt to best one’s opponents by showing how their ideas are bad and how yours are good. What a concept! However, many voices on the rightward side of things (at least the ones who are getting the lion’s share of the attention) have eschewed this approach (I would recommend reading the whole of Frum’s post).
If Senator Grassley wants to make are argument about what he thinks the logic conclusion of the reform package will be, so be it, but do not assert facts not in evidence for the purpose of simply frightening people. Further, have the intellectual fortitude to note that the current system hardly guarantees that everyone’s grandma will get
endless care. Rather, factors such as the decisions made by insurance companies, or the the lack of insurance, could very much affect whether grandma gets continual care (or care at all).
Another thing that I find curious (if not irrational) about this particular aspect of the debate: the part of our health care system that has been directly overseen by the federal government for decades has been Medicare, i.e., health care for those 65+. As such, it isn’t as if we don’t have a rather lengthy amount of empirical evidence that proves that government involvement in the health care of the elderly does not lead to euthanasia of old people to cut costs.
h/t: HuffPo for the video.
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August 13th, 2024 at 10:25 am
What’s happening is a repeat of 1993 - the same groups are opposing it for the same reasons, with the same happy pathological lying. I sincerely hope that this was a gambit by Obama, because if it’s not, he definitely stepped on his d*ck here.
Could he actually have expected the insurance companies to accept this, and the GOP/Blue Dogs to *not* backstab him?
August 13th, 2024 at 1:04 pm
So what’s your point in this line of posts? Is it that it’s a bad thing to do, or that it’s a bad thing for Republicans to do?
The Democrats have used very similar scare tactics for decades to fight off changes to social security and medicare. Indeed it was trotted out at least twice in the Bush II administration — once to kill a Bush proposed a 7% annual growth cap to medicare and once to kill social security reforms. Both, by the way, are still badly needed.
Not to mention such unfair charges were used to kill various smaller reforms and judicial candidates.
But I don’t recall the angst around such exaggerations in the past. Exaggerations a political opposition’s positions has been a staple of political debate for a few millennia. The tendency to demagogue didn’t begin with Republicans. Indeed, wailing about potential death in the streets seems to be a staple of Democratic strategies over the last half century
August 13th, 2024 at 2:02 pm
Buckland,
It is a bad thing to do period. That I haven’t criticized all the political hyperbole ever uttered doesn’t mean that I can’t criticize this bit. Further, I think that the whole death panel/pull the plug on grandma bit is at the upper end of such hyperbole. While I recall multiple times the Dems stating that the Reps wanted to cut medicare or SocSec, that is a far cry from “the government is going to haul you before a panel who will determine if you live or die.” The difference is pretty obvious.
Beyond that, the notion that one cannot evaluate a specific set of utterance because, well, “the other side did it too” or whatever, it problematic. Surely one can evaluate a given set of statement on their own merits.
Also, by your logic, you seem to be retroactively absolving the Democrats for utterances you felt at the time were objectionable. After all, it’s all just demagoguery and whoever’s demagogues can sway the masses, so be it!
My fundamental point is in the post: I prefer Frum’s approach to Grassley’s. As I said in response to a similar comment you made the other day: I can simultaneously understand what is going on here and still not like it.
Also, I would prefer to see a less demagogic GOP than we currently have on display.
August 13th, 2024 at 2:49 pm
“In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life,” Grassley said. “YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO FEAR. You shouldn’t have . . . . a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma”
Updating FDR: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — except we also better beware when when we are besieged by irrational, double-talking fearmongers who are boorish, selfish, frenzied, raucous, and sadistically destructive even to themselves and their kin.
August 13th, 2024 at 2:55 pm
To be honest, they’re doing it because it’s working. Unfortunately, it appears as if a vast majority of Americans choose not to inform themselves properly– and by that, I mean going further than listening to sound bites and reading whatever happens to grace them on the Internet.
And quite frankly, I’d take a congressman’s opposition to government health care options a lot more seriously if they weren’t currently using one. (Must be absolute torture for them.) When you consider how happy most people are with their government plans (i.e. VA, Medicare), I can believe that the U.S. is perfectly capable of running a quality health care option. It just seems as if certain people think that not everyone deserves it. It’s just that simple. And if cost were such an issue, I’m sure they’d be more than willing to opt-out of the taxpayer’s dime. When you think about it, some of the most privileged people in the United States are also some of the biggest recipients of those “government entitlements” they have their minions rail against.
Those privileged senators and representatives are deserving of a good government-run option even if they can afford a good private plan. It’s good enough for them, but us “little people” have to know our place. (Let’s be honest. The lower classes have access to government health care that the middle class doesn’t qualify for. The middle class is what’s hurting, here.)
The caste system failed miserably when the serfs realized they outnumbered the ruling classes. But the ruling classes weren’t stupid. They kept them good and dumb by denying them access to education for a very long time. Maybe I’m just being cynical, but it seems like that is exactly what many in power on the far right have been trying to encourage– a turn from intellectualism. Stay dumb and “down to earth”. Education is elitist. And I have to admit… Ignorance does work in their favor. Hopefully, the middle class will wake up and realize it.
August 13th, 2024 at 3:41 pm
Dr. Taylor, now that I’ve put a little more thought into it… I have to wonder if the “Wizard’s First Rule” might be what we’re looking at?
August 16th, 2024 at 11:28 am
[...] the current period is that this paranoid style is being embraced by mainstream members of the GOP (for example) and their media allies at the moment at what seems1 like a higher level than we normally see. I [...]